{"id":239,"date":"2006-05-10T10:05:56","date_gmt":"2006-05-10T10:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/?p=239"},"modified":"2006-05-10T11:01:49","modified_gmt":"2006-05-10T11:01:49","slug":"the-rise-of-the-uber-gimp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/?p=239","title":{"rendered":"The Rise of the Uber-Gimp"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk_politics\/4978680.stm\">This man<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The image \u201chttp:\/\/newsimg.bbc.co.uk\/media\/images\/41389000\/jpg\/_41389559_douglasbbc203.jpg\u201d cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.\" src=\"http:\/\/newsimg.bbc.co.uk\/media\/images\/41389000\/jpg\/_41389559_douglasbbc203.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&#8230; is now in charge of UK transport policy. He is &#8220;<em><strong>a professional politician<\/strong><\/em>, <em>whose rise in Labour ranks has been relentless, from the moment he started to work as a researcher for Gordon Brown in 1990<\/em>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>A professional politicain. Uber-Gimp, he will dress in your favoured costume and perform un-nameable feats for your delight as long as it progresses his career.<\/p>\n<p>He has no background in transport, knows nothing of running multi-billion pound turnover enterprises. Yet he now sets UK transport policy.<\/p>\n<p>Uber-Gimp, most importantly, does not have the best interests of the public at heart. For one, he has no heart. And two, he does not believe he serves the public, despite being nominally a public servant. He believes, in fact, that the public are fortunate to have him to run their pathetic little lives for them.<\/p>\n<p>Uber-Gimp believes only he can Make Life Better\u00a9.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk_politics\/4756763.stm\">And his first declaration is<\/a>: <em><strong>to announce a \u00a310m fund for the development of nationwide road charging schemes.<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>He hopes new technology will allow drivers to be charged by the mile.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>What new technology, pray tell? Without even unwrapping our crystal ball we see through the swirling mists to a near-future Utopia, where your car is registered via the DVLA to your NIR entry.<\/p>\n<p>In this heavenly, terror-free, fraudless hinterland every journey you make will be logged as your number plate is scanned at every junction.<\/p>\n<p>Imagine the freedom that comes with such luxury! Imagine, some other upwardly-mobile Gimp sat at a console somewhere diligently refusing road access to all the undesirables. Imagine&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.io.com\/gibbonsb\/mencken.html\">Addendum<\/a>:<\/p>\n<h1>\u201cA professional politician is a professionally dishonourable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.\u201d<\/h1>\n<p>Uber-Gimp.<\/p>\n<p>H L Mencken said it better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This man: &#8230; is now in charge of UK transport policy. He is &#8220;a professional politician, whose rise in Labour ranks has been relentless, from the moment he started to work as a researcher for Gordon Brown in 1990&#8220;. A professional politicain. Uber-Gimp, he will dress in your favoured costume and perform un-nameable feats for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16,34,5,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}